It goes without saying that video is one component that makes your eLearning courses more engaging and successful. Indeed, they can help not only demonstrate the content intuitively but also attract learners’ attention entirely. However, it is not always easy to find high-quality videos for your eLearning when you’re working on a budget. In case you can’t afford popular stock video libraries, you might think you’re the only option to take your own videos. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case! In today’s article, let’s bookmark 5 free stock video sites where you can find great footage meeting your needs. Before exploring all of them, we’ll show you a comprehensive look at stock videos.
What are Stock Videos?
If you are in filmmaking, video production, or other related fields, you may have heard about them somehow. Otherwise, even if you’ve never heard of stock videos before, you have been catching them several times every day through the Internet, TV programs, etc.
In general, stock videos, also called stock footage or b-roll, are pieces of video content, clip, or shot. Normally, their duration is shorter than one minute but there are some exceptions. Videographers make clips with a more generic perspective, therefore, shots could fit a large range of concepts and styles. Then, they offer licenses to use the videos in larger productions. That’s stock videos!
As you may know, stock images have three types of licenses as mentioned in the previous post. Similarly, here are three main types of stock video licenses:
- Public Domain: Videos have no copyright restrictions. That is, you can use videos absolutely free and without having to ask permission.
- Royalty Free: Royalty free materials are copyright protected. After paying a one-time licensing fee, you can use it multiple times as you want. For this reason, royalty-free footage is likely the most popular choice. Besides, other people can purchase and use the same videos as yours for their projects.
- Rights Managed: You have to purchase to use videos in a specific project or product. In case you want them for other types of use, you must buy their licenses again. So, a rights-managed license is much more restrictive than a royalty-free license. However, when you use videos, no one is allowed to use them. This way, you will have unique scenes that can’t be seen elsewhere.
With this in mind, a Public Domain license is the most suitable if you are looking for free stock footage.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
In addition to these above licenses, you may also hear about Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. In general, this is a dedication to the public domain because creators gave up their rights in their works, including copyrights. Thanks to that, you are free to copy, and modify, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission or providing attribution. In fact, in recent years, there has been a huge rush of free stock video sites with the Creative Commons Zero license.
Now, let’s dive right into the next part to save the list of five free stock video sites for 2020.
Top 5 Great Free Stock Video Sites
Here are the top 5 free stock footage websites that you should check out for your video editing library and next eLearning course. Keep in mind that not all of the footage you find on these sites will work for your video editing or eLearning content. However, if you look hard enough, you can find lots of great videos.
#1. Pixabay
Pixabay is famous for not only a great library of free stock images but also a huge selection of free stock videos. In fact, there are thousands of free stock video footage & clips formatted as MP4s and generally under one minute in length. All of them are shared by Pixabay’s community of users and are always available to download and use.
Especially, all stock videos are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes. Thus, you can make use of them without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist.
Pros:
- Supply a huge library of free stock videos
- Provide a wide range of categories
- Explore the best videos with the Editor’s Choice feature
- Offer four video size presets and two options for video resolution (HD or 4K)
- Support 26 different languages
Cons:
- Have sponsored videos from Shutterstock, which sometimes distracts you
- Don’t allow editing videos before downloading
#2. Pexels
If you are searching for video editing and eLearning designing materials, Pexels should be at the top of your list as well. Basically, Pexels was launched as a free stock image site, but it has since added a vast library of free stock footage. Indeed, the name tells it all! The whole videos have enough pixels to look impressive on any device. And they can be used commercially and non-commercially with no attribution required or watermarks.
Moreover, Pexels also offers a “mockups” category for footage of mobile devices with green screens that allows you to replace them via chroma keying. Also, you can search for free stock footage depending on the Trending or New category.
Pros:
- Include very high-quality footage
- Supply a wide range of free stock footage and mockup green screen videos
- Provide the time-lapse videos from GoPro-users
- Offer four video sizes to download: Original, Quad HD, Full HD, HD
- Support 28 different languages
Cons:
- Lack of 4K videos
- Include stock videos from Shutterstock
#3. Videvo
We can’t do a post on free stock footage without mentioning Videvo. Founded in 2012, Videvo has grown steadily to become one of the largest online resources dedicated to free HD stock footage and motion graphics. In fact, this website offers thousands of free stock footage and motion graphics created by its community of users. For the first time visiting the website, you can look for the most popular and newest videos easily.
As can be seen, the free stock video quality comes variable. Some are highly professional but some have clearly been shot without a tripod. However, they are generally fine.
Videos on Videvo have one of three licenses: Royalty-Free, Videvo Attribution, and Creative Commons 3.0 Unported License. Thus, make sure to check them out before downloading and using them.
Pros:
- Provide free and high-quality stock footage
- Offer a small collection of 4K videos
- Organize videos as collections and there are about 20 active collections.
- Submit your own videos
- Support 21 different languages
Cons:
- Include videos of variable quality
- Consist of ads and sponsored videos
#4. Mixkit
Mixkit claims that they have “a free gallery of extraordinary stock videos”. And we couldn’t agree more. Finding free stock footage is just a breeze from their friendly and impressive homepage. All the videos on Mixkit are completely free stock footage that allows downloading and using high-quality stock videos anywhere. No sign-up is needed, and no attribution is required, when they say free, they mean it. Thanks to that, you can use any Mixkit b-roll in your commercial and non-commercial projects.
In case you want to be alerted of 10 new videos each week, Mixkit welcomes you to sign up via your email address.
Pros:
- Offer a large library of free stock videos, music, templates, and graphics
- Include a wide variety of categories and styles
- Provide exactly the number of footage in each category.
- Supply free stock vertical videos
- Easy to search and download
Cons:
- Lack of 4K videos
- Support only English language
#5. Videezy
Overall, Videezy is the go-to free stock footage source for many bloggers in the world. In fact, there are a large number of videos to choose from, in both 4K and HD resolution. Although the videos’ quality is mixed, they are generally good. Plus, the whole video is supplied in MP4 format and you can find out the resolution below each video.
Footage from Videezy is free for personal and commercial use, however, users must give attribution for them. When searching for b-roll, you may notice the results with a green “Pro” tag on their thumbnails. In particular, these are premium videos only available after purchasing.
Pros:
- Hold a wide range of free stock videos
- Provide many impressive aerial drone footage
- Have a selection of 4K clips
- Supply 12 categories with several subjects
- Offer many engaging free after-effects templates
Cons:
- Require attribution
- Include ads from Shutterstock
- Have to pay for premium footage
Have you visited any of these free stock footage for eLearning and video editing, or do you have a go-to site that I didn’t mention? Please share your experience with us. What’s more, don’t forget to visit our website, YouTube channel, Twitter, and Facebook page for more interesting information every day.
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